


Seven Steps to Quitting Your Bad Decisions

by damalur



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And now you're going to go apologize."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Steps to Quitting Your Bad Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> Post-episode tag for 2x01 written for the [Cotton Candy Bingo](http://damalur.dreamwidth.org/702797.html) prompt 'loving yourself'. Verges on crack, eep!

"And now you're going to go apologize," Belle said.

"To whom and for what, precisely?" She was sitting on his desk, still in the grey checkered dress he'd found for her, looking as though she'd spent her whole life in this world and in that spot. She had a way of owning his spaces that in anyone else he would've found threatening.

"For the wraith. Or the...whatever-it-was. The townspeople were absolutely terrified, and Queen Regina's son is beside himself. I think you owe them some sort of explanation."

"I think I _owe_ them nothing. Sweetheart—" Rumpelstiltskin set down his cup with a rattle. "You can't be serious about this. Where did you get to on your walk? That was the most addle-headed thing you've ever done, going out when a creature like that was on the loose in a land you neither know nor understand."

"I can take care of myself," Belle said, perfectly self-possessed. "Anyway, I doubt you would've let me leave if I'd really been in danger. Didn't you say the wraith only hunts those who've been marked?"

"I am not apologizing."

"Yes, you are. Why do you think I'm here, anyway?"

Rumpelstiltskin let his eyes wander away, taking in the spinning wheel, his locked cabinets, the clothes-rack, Belle's shapely ankles, and the curtain leading to the front room, before finally saying, "Because of some fool notion that I need saving?"

"No." She tapped a nail against her china cup to punctuate the point. "You're wrong."

He had to take a sip of tea to hide his perverse delight. "Oh?"

"I'm here because I love you, and because as a consequence of that you need to stop seeing yourself as something other than human."

"Dear, I am...several centuries too old to be anything but 'other than human', and that's discounting the thousand souls who have very real proof of ways I've wronged them. I don't feel remorse."

Belle stared at him, and he wondered if he'd finally managed to shock her into flight, but then she opened her mouth and said—

"Bull."

"Pardon?"

"That is an utter load of horse manure. No, I'm here to remind you how to behave like a man, and the first way I'm going to help is by holding you accountable. Now go apologize."

He might have gaped. He was certainly beginning to regret that he'd fallen in love with such an imminently practical woman.

"Go on!" she said. "I'm sure I can figure out how to work the telewave if I need you."

"Telephone," he said, weakly.

"I thought that was the box with the pictures?"

"The box with the pictures is the television."

She frowned. "And which one heats up—oh, never mind. I found some things to read, anyway."

"On your walk?"

"Oh, yes," she said, cheerier than he'd seen her since she'd first regained her memories. "The library wasn't locked last night, can you imagine? It was a mess inside, but I came across a book called _Helping You Help Yourself_."

"Great god," he said, and then got up to go apologize.

-

Nobody quite seemed to understand what was happening when he turned up at the Town Hall meeting, told them that he had perhaps made an error in setting the wraith loose, and vanished out the door as if by magic. The satisfaction of their disbelief almost balanced the humiliation of being made to admit he was wrong. Almost.


End file.
